Isis Begins: A Discussion with Author Ken Timmerman
By Jerry Gordon and Rod Bryant (August 2018)
Massacre of the Innocents, Peter Paul Rubens, 1610
Kenneth R. Timmerman is a veteran Iran watcher, an intrepid investigative journalist and advocate for the protection of persecuted Christians in the Middle East. He first disclosed through his reporting in 2008, the virtual genocide of the ancient Iraqi Assyrian-Chaldean and Syriac Christian communities during the Second Gulf War. His reporting revealed the eminent failure of US refugee resettlement policies to override the control of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. This thwarted admission of these Christian communities threatened with genocide whether it be Shi’ite Iran, Al Qaeda or ISIS. The jihadism of pure Salafist Islam infused with the hard core of the Iraqi Ba’ahist intelligence and security operatives of the late Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime threatened Christians and Yazidis.
Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs and the Party of Surrender</em>; the 2014 Dark Forces; The Truth About What Really Happened in Benghazi</em>; and the 2016 Deception: the Making of the You Tube video Hillary and Obama Blamed for Benghazi.
For the brave Iraqi Christian interpreters who risked their lives to help their American liberators, and for the Families of the martyrs.”
Against this background, we interviewed Kenneth R. Timmerman on Israel News Talk Radio-Beyond the Matrix shortly after the publication of ISIS Begins on July 10, 2018.
Gordon: In this new book you have has an interesting character, a relative of the late Saddam Hussein and a Ba’athist party figure who appears to be a double agent recruited by the CIA. Is there any factual basis for that and what examples can you cite of how former Ba’athist military became the core of the ISIS security system that launched its rise in both Syria and Iraq?
Anybody who has been to Northern Iraq will recognize my descriptions of the road between Erbil and Mosul and the dangers that lurk in the desert there. That will immediately hit home to them. I had a couple of weapons techs who helped me in my selection of weaponry in the book. You will see references to a lot of Glock 19s but there is also a Barrett Light 50 that comes in from time to time and does its thing. At the end there is a fuel air explosive which is a rather unusual weapon. I happen to know something about that from personal experience, having been held by the PLO in Beirut in 1982 in a building that was blown up with a fuel air explosive by the Israeli Air Force two hours after I was released from inside it. So there was a little personal experience thrown into that as well.
Timmerman: Let me just say this: an attentive eye might recognize some of the characters in my book. They would certainly recognize a certain U.S. Ambassador who makes an appearance. They might recognize a Southern Governor who makes an appearance in the book. They might recognize some former CIA Officers or former U.S. military officers who make appearances in the book but that of course would merely be an extraordinary coincidence.
Bryant: At the start of the Second Gulf War in 2003 there were approximately 1.5 million Iraqi Assyrian Christians in Northern Iraq and on the plains of biblical Nineveh. Talk about their heritage, and the conflicts they had with Saddam Hussein’s regime, with the Kurds, and with Iran? What is their current status?
Bryant: How many of these were people who became refugees and went to another country? Were there that many?
Gordon: We have a mutual friend, Joseph Kassab, who has been involved as an advocate for refugee resettlement for Assyrian-Chaldean–Syriac Christians who are still threatened. What is it this government could do to save this ancient remnant from being further persecuted?
erman: I was involved in a separate initiative, at the end of the Bush 43 Administration, to bring some of these people into this country. They included the Christian Interpreters who have helped us, the people who have worked at our embassy and our consulate up in the north who have been targeted by the jihadis. We promised them we would help get them out and we didn’t do it. When I came back from one of these mission trips in 2008, Ellen Sauerbrey, who I happened to know from Maryland politics, was the senior person at the State Department, the political appointee in charge of refugee resettlement. She had no awareness whatsoever, she had never been briefed on it by her underlings who hated Iraqi Christians and wanted to bring Muslims into this country instead. That is what was happening through the UN Refugee Organizations. I tell this story in ISIS Begins. There is a scene that is ripped out of my own reporting. I can tell you that when Christians go in to the UNHCR in Amman, Jordan or another location they are identified, the intake officers, who are Muslim, immediately understand if they are Christian or not. If they are Christian, their file goes in the circular file and there is no attempt to resettle them.
Bryant: Is there any logic behind that?
Nineb Lamassu, who wrote the dictionary of Modern Aramaic; assisted me in those sections of the book where there were Aramaic phrases. So, all of that is absolutely authentic. It has been vetted, corrected and made sure that it is authentic.
Gordon: In ISIS Begins, one of the plot lines which is fascinating is a contest between jihadis and the Vatican. These threats are arrayed against the guardians of the sacred book in the mountain monastery of Mar Homizid on the Nineveh Plains in the town of Al Qosh. What is the significance of the fateful meeting between Nestorian Monk Bahira and the young Mohammed?
Gordon: What are you going to do next after ISIS Begins?
Timmerman: I have actually finished a memoir that should be out next year. Stories of my time on the road with the lost boys of Beirut to Baghdad. That includes in the later case, information on the Generals and the heads of the nuclear weapons programs. Lots of stories to tell.
______________________________________
Jerome B Gordon is a senior editor at the New English Review. Rod Bryant is host of Israel News Talk Radio—Beyond the Matrix.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast